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I hadn't seen any jellyfish while I was swimming but the student explained that their tentacles are very long so they can sting at a distance. His forefinger was sticky with the ointment he was now rubbing into my arm. He seemed well informed about jellyfish. The medusas are transparent because they are 95 per cent water, so they camouflage easily. Also, one of the reasons there are so many of them in the oceans of the world is because of over-fishing. The main thing was to make sure I didn't rub or scratch the welts. There might still be jellyfish cells on my arm and rubbing the sting encourages them to release more venom, but his special ointment would deactivate the stinging cells. As he talked I could see his soft, pink lips pulsing like a medusa in the middle of his beard. He handed me a pencil stub and asked me to please fill in the form.
Name: Sofia Papastergiadis
Age: 25
Country of origin: UK
Occupation:
The jellyfish don't care about my occupation, so what is the point? It is a sore point, more painful than my sting and more of a problem than my surname which no one can say or spell. I told him I have a degree in anthropology but for the time being I work in a café in West London – it's called the Coffee House and it's got free Wi-Fi and renovated church pews. We roast our own beans and make three types of artisan espresso . . . so I don't know what to put under 'Occupation'.
The student tugged at his beard. 'So do you anthropologists study primitive people?'
'Yes, but the only primitive person I have ever studied is myself.'
I suddenly felt homesick for Britain's gentle, damp parks. I wanted to stretch my primitive body flat out on green grass where there were no jellyfish floating between the blades.
There is no green grass in Almería except on the golf courses. The dusty, barren hills are so parched they used to film Spaghetti Westerns here – one even starred Clint Eastwood. Real cowboys must have had cracked lips all the time because my lips have started to split from the sun and I put lipsalve on them every day. Perhaps the cowboys used animal fat? Did they gaze out at the infinite sky and miss the absence of kisses and caresses? And did their own troubles disappear in the mystery of space like they sometimes do when I gaze at the galaxies on my shattered screen saver?
The student seemed quite knowledgeable about anthropology as well as jellyfish. He wants to give me an idea for 'an original field study' while I am in Spain. 'Have you seen the white plastic structures
that cover all the land in Almería?'
I had seen the ghostly white plastic. It stretches as far as the eye can see across the plains and valleys.
'They are greenhouses,' he said. 'The temperature inside these farms in the desert can rise to forty-five degrees. They employ illegal immigrants to pick the tomatoes and peppers for the supermarkets, but it's more or less slavery.'
I thought so. Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered. As a child, I used to cover my face with my hands so that no one would know I was there. And then I discovered that covering my face made me more visible because everyone was curious to see what it was I wanted to hide in the first place.
He looked at my surname on the form and then at the thumb on his left hand, which he started to bend, as if he were checking the joint was still working.
'You are Greek, aren't you?'
His attention is so unfocused it's unsettling. He never actually looks at me directly. I recite the usual: my father is Greek, my mother is English, I was born in Britain.
'Greece is a smaller country than Spain, but it can't pay its bills.
The dream is over.'
Excerpted from Hot Milk by Deborah Levy. Copyright © 2016 by Deborah Levy. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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